MAPUSA: At 84-years old, Sara Varghese is something of a legend around Mapusa, where people call her the ‘Walking Nurse’. The monicker is well-earned, as Sara can be seen walking for kilometres at a stretch to make house visits to the people she serves- the poor, the elderly and the disabled. Despite her advanced age and frail legs, Sara religiously visits her patients to attend to their needs- be it insulin shots or dressing bed sores and wounds, villagers in the area breathe easy as the walking nurse is only a call away.
While Sara’s services are free of cost, it is her kind and gentle bedside manner that her patients swear by. When asked why she continues to work at a time when she should be enjoying retirement, Sara says she is unable to ignore her calling. “Only medicines are not sufficient to heal sick people; they also require kind words, nutritious food and prayers,” quips Sara, who lives off her pension and says she wants for nothing else.
Originally from Kerala, Sara has lived in Goa since 1966, when she dropped in for a short visit to support her pregnant sister. “Staying back in Goa was never the plan, but it looks like it was my destiny,” she beams with her toothless smile. Sara Varghese followed in the footsteps of many young Malayali girls, when she decided to pursue a nursing course to become a lady health visitor and maternity health supervisor in a college in Indore. While she initially struggled to follow the Hindi-medium instruction, she topped her class in her final year, earning accolades for her outreach work in rural areas. “I had a tough time living in Madhya Pradesh, only because I was used to a diet of fish and rice and had landed up in the land of chapatis and vegetables,” she recalls, with a twinkle in her eye.
After a few months of living in Goa with her sister and Naval officer brother-in-law, Sara joined the Red Cross’ Old Goa facility as a nurse. A newspaper advertisement for a job at the Directorate of Health Services caught her eye, and she joined the Goa government as a village health nurse in the late 1960’s, serving various health centres, including Aldona, Cuncolim, Sanguem, Bicholim and Pernem throughout her long career.
Even with her long list of home-bound patients, Sara also provides and cares for six destitute people she has welcomed into her home- a couple of them are amputees and the others suffer from debilitating health conditions.
“They had nowhere to go, and were unable to work. I receive a decent pension, which is more than sufficient for all of us,” she says, cheerfully. “As long as I am able bodied, I will look after them. It gives me purpose in life,” says Sara.
